Are you a Sunday Stalwart? Solidly Secular? Or somewhere in between? (Pew Research Center quiz)

spiritually awake

spiritually awake

derp sorry

spiritually awake, the straight to dvd sequel to beetlejuice

How much meaning and fulfillment, if any, do spiritual practices, such as meditation, provide you?

meditation is not a spiritual practice

not all would agree
C/D: "I'm not religious but I am spiritual."

i get that it comes from a spiritual tradition but it doesn't have to be attached to that at all, and i really hate how anything a step or two above eating, shitting and sleeping in the category of caring for oneself as a living being gets labeled as "spiritual"

solidly secular. i figured almost everyone itt would be too, very interesting. i don't even consider myself to be staunchly atheist (which is how I would describe my wife's views) but I still feel closer to believing there is no higher power than there is one.

yeah, I don't consider myself an atheist but an agnostic, in the sense that I have no idea what the hell is going to happen when I die but none of the options seem appealing

life is incredibly weird, contradictory, multivalent, complex, etc. and turning towards spiritual explanations for existence, which are always historical/social constructs, is a way to avoid facing life's full, always-unfolding mystery, exactly because those ideas claim to be above it.

well, sure, in a broad sense, but it can all be distilled down to the fact that the thought of losing consciousness forever is terrifying and impossible for the mind to process so they come up with something, anything, not to have to do it

or else there's a god and I'm going to hell for saying that

haha. it's kind of a mystery to me why people are so terrified of it tbh. i mean i'm scared of losing consciousness too but not enough to invent a bunch of bullshit because of it.

religion resister, i like mountains

some nights I can hardly sleep from fear of relinquishing consciousness

Needs an option beyond "solidly secular" like "actively hostile to religion."

the thought of being conscious forever is much worse than death

it's not a great thought, particularly with the world getting worse and global warming being a thing that exists, but at least I can conceptualize what it will be like to be conscious for it

whereas it's not possible to conceptualize the alternative. "oh, it's like sleeping" -- we don't experience sleep, we experience waking up, which won't happen. we experience dreams, which also don't happen without a conscious mind.

There is no way all of this is just atoms smashing together

https://shaneraymond.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/mao-kundun1.jpg

Needs an option beyond "solidly secular" like "actively hostile to religion."

― Moves like Javert (Ye Mad Puffin), 4. september 2018 22:38 (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought that was what 'Religion Resister' means? Which is the second worst opinion, btw, better than 'God-and-Country Believer' but slightly worse than 'Spiritually Awake'

under a christian framework that just means you are resisting the call of jesus christ to have a personal relationship with you or some shit like that

there's still religions other than Christianity, some of them are even quite popular~

And getting more popular all the time. Unlike Christianity.

not mine though. Anyway as I said in that thread linked above I'm religious but not spiritual.

well I almost never remember my dreams but even so, I'm keenly aware of my existence as the exception not the norm. I recognise how dependent and linked my consciousness is to what's going on around me, I am aware of it changing and I've seen it gradually decay in other people. I remember seeing death as this huge yawning oblivion but that seems nonsensically solipsistic to me now

sure, but as mentioned above this quiz is clearly devised under a Christian and specifically Protestant framework even as it makes token efforts to expand it beyond one

xp -- it's the opposite of solipsism. there is no self to conceive of anything. there is no "conceiving" because the bodily functions necessary to bring that about aren't happening about. to which the natural question is: so then what?

I imagine when we're dead we'll feel pretty much like we felt before we were born

iirc that wasn't so bad

solidly secular obv

xp i mean before we were conceived, not referring to sensations in the womb

the idea that ignorant literalism is the purest sort of religious faith should always be challenged

otm. maimonides points out something that should be obvious. do you know how we know the bible isn't literal? bc it talks about god's hands. god doesn't have hands bc he's not corporeal. so we know the bible talks in metaphor and therefore dot dot dot. ppl who are textual literalists are traditionally incoherent.

also i got sunday stalwart and like shakes i say fuck that sunday is a hero to most but doesn't mean

xp those conceptions predate me, I am just hosting them for a while

how do we know god doesnt have hands

a line I've heard from some p well-informed clergy is that belief as a sort of truth-claim is a fairly recent invention and is at least somewhat incommensurable with how 'believe' (& its equivs in other languages) was used back in the day (i.e. the "i believe in you" sense is older). i am inclined to believe something similar wrt sincerity but i cba looking into it

(xp) He has legs, according to Alan Partridge. Gas legs.

xxp well i do know christians have a problem w/ that idea too iirc

well Reb Yeshuah had hands, anyway

where I grew up the bar was not just "believe" the bar was "believe and have a personal relationship with." and supposedly if you just asked, the latter would happen. spoilers: I did ask, and it didn't happen

(this would have been in my teens)

I suppose "believe and have a personal relationship with" is closer to the original meaning, as in, trust in god, some degree of selflessness

[I imagine when we're dead we'll feel pretty much like we felt before we were born

hey this is MY line

xp in monotheistic religions that is imo absolutely colored with "have no other gods" - not sure about the role of "belief" in non-monotheistic faiths

Y’all explaining this quiz to each other and complaining about its obvious Christian bias? It’s a multiple choice test! Pick the best answer, not the right answer, is what I’m trying to say.

I’m solidly secular and kinda disappointed that it didn’t have follow-on questions like “is this all just atoms bouncing around” (yes) or “is free will a thing” (almost definitely not) because I bet less than 17% are with me there

“is free will a thing” (almost definitely not)

argh the ILX poll on this question drove me *nuts* (and I agree w you, btw)

xp yeah but there have been so many instances in which nominally monotheistic religions have been lax abt ppl worshipping, paying tribute to or otherwise focusing on particular subdivisions, incarnations etc. of god not to mention spirits of animals & ancestors, idols, saints and so on that i find the exclusivity claims hard to take too seriously

or “is free will a thing” (almost definitely not) because I bet less than 17% are with me there

― Paleo Weltschmerz (El Tomboto), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 5:36 PM (eleven minutes ago)

This is the worst. Free will is a thing

yeah, an imaginary thing

oh yeah this is the stuff

otm. maimonides points out something that should be obvious. do you know how we know the bible isn't literal? bc it talks about god's hands. god doesn't have hands bc he's not corporeal. so we know the bible talks in metaphor and therefore dot dot dot. ppl who are textual literalists are traditionally incoherent.

― Mordy, 4. september 2018 23:12 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Or it could be that different parts of the bible were written by different people, and it's not so much metaphorical as it is incoherent and contradictory.

Oh yeah this is the stuff

free will is not a thing

sike i chose to type that

xxxp textual literalists believe that the entire bible is coherent + true so i'm not that's as exculpatory as u imagine

Oh, I have no wish to excuse textual literalists :)

lol dmac

pi is 3

i appreciate this is marginally less useless than most surveys of religious belief but i think its worth thinking about to whom these are the distinctions that make a difference.

the idea that, say, all secular ppl will have more in common with each other than they will with certain theists is rubbish. esp given that ppls beliefs change and that its often quite subtle or minor shifts in overall worldview that wld move them up or down this scale, or at least, the differences are overstated.

and ofc, my favourite point for all discussions: a lot of ppl don't really know what they think. not just agnosticism; uncertainty and the inability to express these ideas are integral to all(?) religious traditions. ppl 'suddenly' changing their minds and so on, all manner of outside influences both at the individual and collective level.

the Pew Center isn't here for your shades of gray, they are here to generate a foundation of facts.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I got solidly secular "along with 17% of the public" bloody hell. Are there really that few nonreligious people in the US? I feel like if you did this poll in my environs I'd be in around a 40% or more group.

"Religious Resister", which is horseshit if you aren't equating religion with Christianity as these fuckers appear to be.

Because Christianity is the only religious worth resisting?

I got solidly secular, as expected, though I'd say it's only 90% accurate.

There needs to be an ‘aggressively atheist’ category, but it’s a pretty poorly constructed poll.

NB the categories are just clusters of ppl who answered similarly to the questions in the survey that were induced by data+clustering method+chosen # of clusters. The names are post hoc and might as well be A, B, C…

I knew I was solidly secular before I took the quiz and that is the result I got. Very clear answers, no waffling at all. Easy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

yawn

i feel pretty good about my result -- my mom literally raised me to believe that one could be a good and moral person and not belong to any religion. she is in her 70s now and i think is fairly radical for her generation in her commitment to secular values (my dad too but that's another story) solidly secular is how i would have described myself at any point in my life.

i think this is a fine result -- did anyone expect religious zeal?